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[Sid Peimer] Space shuttle Columbia orbited the earth for two weeks with an unknown hole in the wing due to a foam strike (the latter which NASA did know about). The craft burned up on re-entry, killing the entire crew. It also killed PowerPoint at NASA. These are the six cognitive traps that PowerPoint is so good at - and all six appear in a key slide that was used in a presentation by Boeing while Columbia was damaged but still flying.

[Sid Peimer] The OJ trial was weird. Although I don't have any of the specifics, I do know that DNA can't jump and that if you're innocent you don't go driving away in a white Bronco with the entire police force on your tail. Or maybe you do. But that's beside the point. I was not a juror and OJ was found innocent. Marcia Clark, though, was guilty - of making four key errors in her pitch to the jury.

[Sid Peimer] What might have been if Dr Martin Luther King Jr. had faced his audience in the hot summer of 1963, not with the words, “I have a dream,” but instead, “I have a … PowerPoint presentation”? Or Winston Churchill read, “We shall fight them on the beaches, and the rest of the areas on this slide.”? The world would probably be a very different place.

[Sid Peimer] Visit the business section of your bookstore, and you are left with the distinct impression that improbable entrepreneurial success is achieved by people whose intuition overcame conventional wisdom. However, Cornell's Prof Gilovich reminds us that what's missing is the likely corollary that many, if not most, fail quickly and quietly.

[Sid Peimer] The game has changed. Although ‘feet into the store' is still the challenge for most retail brands, on the internet there's a new battle that has a simple outcome for victory: being found.

[Sid Peimer] Ezines (electronic magazines/mailers) have made an enormous difference to industries that have engaged this assertive medium in their communications mix. Its immediacy, cost and flexibility – when applied correctly – can make the difference between growth and stagnation for many brands. Here are 10 thoughts that will stand in your way to success in this virtual arena.

[Sid Peimer] Asked what he would do with the US$12 000 prize he won in a National Spelling Bee, the thirteen-year-old winner proclaimed, "I'm going to buy a lot of video games. Like, a lot." The effect of playing video games may have surprising results. For one, they probably don't affect spelling.

[Sid Peimer] When the Nobel laureate, Dr Barry Marshall, swallowed a test tube of bacteria, the nausea and vomiting that followed confirmed the fact that most ulcers are not the result of stress and spicy food, but quite simply due to the bug Helicobacter pylori. If you kill the bacteria - my art director called them helicopter pilots - the ulcer disappears. However, it took over ten years for the medical fraternity to accept this en masse. Why do we sometimes refuse to change our minds in spite of all the evidence?

[Sid Peimer] Henry Ford sold the Model T in 'Any colour you like as long as it's black', with the slogan 'It gets you there and it brings you back.' He sold 15 million. This was in a market devoid of choice - where marketing could be treated as science - price and sales marching in unison. In a competitive market, however, strategy follows the principles of design, not science.